Evaluating the comparative efficiency of the postal services in OECD countries using context-dependent and measure-specific data envelopment analysis

Abstract

Purpose – In an effort to help policy makers develop competitive postal service strategies, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the comparative operating efficiencies of postal services across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations and then identify room for service improvement. Design/methodology/approach – As a better alternative to the conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) which requires the proportional improvements of inputs and outputs simultaneously, the authors propose the combined use of both context-dependent and measure-specific DEAs to measure the relative attractiveness and progress of the national postal operators of OECD countries. Findings – Defying the conventional notion that public enterprises operate less efficiently than private enterprises, the author discovered that some state-owned public enterprises such as postal service operators could still be efficient if managed properly. Even inefficient postal services operators could significantly improve their service performances, once they identified the root causes of their service failures. Through a series of model experiments and testing, the authors found that proposed context-dependent and measure-specific DEA models were more useful for finding such causes than the conventional DEA model. Practical implications – For public officials and policy makers, the proposed DEAs can pinpoint what it takes to become more efficient and what steps need to be taken to improve postal service operations gradually. Originality/value – This paper is the first to combine the context-dependent DEA with measure-specific DEA to evaluate the comparative efficiency (or progress) and inefficiency (or regress) of the national postal operators of 25 OECD countries.

Optimal scale sizes and average-profit efficiency under uncertainty: A chance-constrained DEA approach

“…The performance analysis of postal regions is notable in economic development. As Çakır et al [ 44 ] mentioned, there are not many studies that analyze the performance of postal areas. We, therefore, consider the information of ten postal areas in Iran according to data availability.…”

Using an Interval Type-2 Fuzzy AROMAN Decision-Making Method to Improve the Sustainability of the Postal Network in Rural Areas

“…The number of delivery points, i.e., the number of households that are served by a PNU, is an important attribute that gives information about the significance of a particular postal unit [47]. A similar attribute relates to the covered area by a PNU [48]. Even though the goal of many studies is to minimize capital resources, such as vehicles [49], here, we should maximize this criterion because the PNU that covers a wider area can be considered more important for the fulfillment of universal service obligations.…”

Benchmarking the operational efficiency of Mexican hospitals – a longitudinal study

“…The DEA methodology was developed by Charnes et al (1978), who proposed a constant returns to scale (CRS) model, later improved by Charnes et al (1985) and Banker et al (1984) to include a variable returns to scale (VRS). These models have been used in many applications across a wide variety of industries, including banking, energy, agriculture and farming, transportation and supply chain management, education, healthcare, postal services, hotel industry, among others (Seiford and Zhu, 1999;Chen et al, 2004;Sufian, 2011;Liu et al, 2013;Paradi and Zhu, 2013;Wu et al, 2013;Mirhedayatian et al, 2014;Nabavi-Pelesaraei et al, 2014;Çakır et al, 2015;Gandhi and Sharma, 2018). Further, DEA methodology has also been applied to various data types, including ordinal (Cook et al, 1996), categorical (Banker and Morey, 1986) and time-series data (Charnes et al, 1985).…”